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Thursday, December 10, 2009

American and European scientists say the upgraded Hubble space telescope has spotted the oldest galaxies ever seen. The images were taken with the telescope’s new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in August this year.

The galaxies are about 13 billion light years from Earth, meaning they formed less than one billion years after the Big Bang — the cosmological model of the initial conditions and subsequent development of the universe.

WFC3 was installed in May this year, during a mission by the space shuttle Atlantis to repair and upgrade Hubble. Experts say the new instrument will let them peer even further back in time, to when the universe was in its infancy. The more distant a galaxy is, the more its light is “redshifted” due to expansion of the universe. Light from the furthest galaxies is shifted to infrared wavelengths invisible to the human eye, but WFC3 can detect these.

The new image was taken in August, in the same region as a 2004 visible light image known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The 2004 photo previously showed the most distant galaxies, but the new infrared pictures from the WFC3 allow even more remote galaxies to be seen.

Capturing the image took four days, and the total exposure lasted 173,000 seconds. In the three months since, twelve scientific papers have been submitted on it. On Tuesday one of these confirmed the galaxies as the furthest ever seen.

They are also the oldest, with the light from them having taken around 13 billion years to reach Earth.

“At these distances, you’re really looking back in time, like you have a time machine,” said Ray Villard, of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “Those things don’t exist anymore.”

The photo could be one of the ultimate achievements of the Hubble telescope, now almost twenty years old.

“These new observations are likely to be the most sensitive images Hubble will ever take,” said Professor Jim Dunlop of the University of Edinburgh.

The servicing mission in May extended the telescope’s life by around five years, but it is scheduled to be replaced by the James Webb Space Telescope in 2014. This will use infrared imaging and have a greater collecting area than Hubble, and it is thought that it may be able make out objects from just 100 million years after the Big Bang.

“We’ve really pushed Hubble to its limits,” said Villard, “and we need a bigger space telescope to go back even farther. It shows us there are really exciting things to look for with the Webb telescope.”

Thursday, July 7, 2005

A Florida man is being charged with 3rd degree felony for logging into a private Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) Internet access point without permission. Benjamin Smith III, 41, is set for a pre-trial hearing this month in the first case of its kind in the United States.

This kind of activity occurs frequently, but often goes undetected by the owners of these wireless access points (WAPs). Unauthorized users range from casual Web browsers, to users sending e-mails, to users involved in pornography or even illegal endeavours.

According to Richard Dinon, owner of the WAP Smith allegedly broke into, Smith was using a laptop in an automobile while parked outside Dinon’s residence.

There are many steps an owner of one of these access points can take to secure them from outside users. Dinon reportedly knew how to take these steps, but had not bothered because his “neighbors are older.”

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Sydney University Sports and Aquatic Centre, Sydney —Wikinews attended the finals of the Women’s National Wheelchair Basketball League at the Sydney University Sports and Aquatic Centre over the weekend. The Be Active Western Stars won the Women’s National Wheelchair Basketball League championship 40–43 in a low-scoring game on Sunday night against the Sachs Goudcamp Bears characterised by relentless defence by both sides.

The Stars fought their way back from being nine points down at three quarter time to take the lead with only minutes to go, thanks to a spectacular shot by Georgia Inglis. The match saw Amber Merritt and Kylie Gauci engage in a protracted duel. At one point Merritt suffered a bone-crunching sideways fall that the crowd feared meant she had injured her shoulder, but Merritt got back up again.

Gauci was fouled out in the last minutes, and Merritt used her free throws to put the Stars three points up. Japanese import Mari Amimoto attempted to tie the game with a three pointer, but missed.

Merritt has suffered injury this season. She showed Wikinews a long scar along the right forearm. Surgeons had corrected where she had torn the muscle away from the bone.

The Bears won their place in the final by beating Victoria in the Qualifying Final on Friday night 40–62. The Stars had to defeat the Sydney Uni Flames 66–34 on Friday night and then Victoria 32–48 on Saturday night to earn their place in the final. Victoria defeated the Sydney Uni Flames 59–42 to claim the bronze medals.

After the games there were the presentations. The Western Stars’ Clare Nott was named 1 point player MVP, Kylie Gauci was 2 point player MVP, Sarah Stewart from the Sydney Uni Flames was 3 point player MVP and Merritt was 4 point player MVP. These four players, along with Cobi Crispin from Victoria form the All Star Five for 2013. Victoria’s Ellie Cole, who won four gold medals in swimming at the London Paralympics, was named Best New Talent. Nonetheless, Cole told Wikinews that she was not giving up swimming to become a basketball player.

Despite her injury, Merritt was the league’s high scorer for the season. Mari Amimoto was named the MVP of the finals series, but Gauci was season MVP.

Liesl Tesch made a special presentation to Lisa Edmonds, a pioneer of the women’s game who has been playing wheelchair basketball for 24 years. Lisa was part of the original Australian Women’s basketball team back in 1989, and played in the 1992, 1996 and 2000 Paralympics.

This was the last season to be administered by Disabilty Sports Australia. Starting next season, the league will be administered by Basketball Australia

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Independent U.S. presidential candidate Ralph Nader had harsh words for the Democrats who engineered yesterday’s passage of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, a bailout of the U.S. financial system. At a campaign stop in Waterbury, Connecticut on Saturday, Nader said that Democrats passed up a chance to enact re-regulation of the financial system and instead gave Wall Street everything it wanted.

According to Nader, Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), Representative Barney Frank (D-MA), and other Democrats considered but rejected measures such as a tax on transactions of derivatives (a “speculation tax”) because of their financial ties to Wall Street and its lobbyists. He said that Representative Chris Murphy (D-CT), who represents Waterbury, had “become a toady” of Nancy Pelosi. He drew enthusiastic applause by calling Murphy “a dynamic fraud”, and referred to Senator Joe Lieberman as “the Hermaphrodite of American Politics”. For Murphy and Representative Chris Shays (R-CT), Nader said, supporting the bailout despite the opposition of constituents was a “profile in betrayal”. Because there were no public hearings where taxpayers and experts could weigh in on the bailout, Nader characterized it as a return to “taxation without representation“—under “King George IV” 225 years after the 13 colonies were taxed under King George III.

Asked about causes of the financial crisis, Nader pointed to the deregulation of the financial sector with the 1999 Glass-Steagall Act and further deregulation in 2000, as well as the rise of overly complex financial derivatives. He outlined a four-part reform plan:

1. Re-regulation of financial markets
2. Increasing shareholder control of corporations
3. Taxpayer equity as part of any bailout, as in the 1979 bailout of Chrysler Corporation
4. Making speculators pay by enacting a 0.1% tax on derivatives transactions (which Nader said will amount to over $500 trillion this year)

Regarding the equity warrants included in the passed bailout, Nader relayed word from an unnamed source that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson had told Wall Street executives “don’t worry, it’s not enforceable”.

Nader told reporters that he had abandoned the Green Party because “Greens are not disciplined, and they’re not mature”, and also lack the fund-raising capabilities to break into mainstream political discussions. “They bicker and bicker,” he said, pushing out their best people. However, he endorsed several local Green Party candidates, including Chris Murphy’s opponent Harold Burbank.

The virtual media blackout for third party campaigns by national newspapers and networks has been a source of continual frustration for the Nader campaign, as well as the campaigns of Libertarian Bob Barr and Green Cynthia McKinney and the post-campaign activities of Republican Ron Paul. According to Nader, reporters tell him that editors of national media are “very bigoted against third party and independent candidacies”. Even journalists for taxpayer-supported media, such as National Public Radio‘s Terry Gross and the Public Broadcasting Service‘s Jim Lehrer, have shut him out during this campaign. Debates, he lamented, are controlled by corporate interests through the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Nader spoke to a supportive crowd of about 60 people and his campaign raised over $2000 at the event, their third visit to Waterbury. The event took place in the former building of a closed-down bank.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Early afternoon saw a shooting in the church parking lot of New Life Church, an Evangelical Megachurch, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States. According to a report quoting the church’s pastor four people were shot by a gunman in the car park.

At this time it is unknown if there is any connection with yesterday’s shooting approximately 70 miles away in Arvada, Colorado, where a gunman shot two and injured two people at Faith Bible Chapel’s missionary training centre in a dormitory.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

2020 Melbourne Lord Mayor candidate Wayne Tseng answered some questions about his campaign for the upcoming election from Wikinews. The Lord Mayor election in the Australian city is scheduled to take place this week.

Tseng runs a firm called eTranslate, which helps software developers to make the software available to the users. In the candidate’s questionnaire, Tseng said eTranslate had led to him working with all three tiers of the government. He previously belonged to the Australian Liberal Party, but has left since then, to run for mayorship as an independent candidate.

Tseng is of Chinese descent, having moved to Australia with his parents from Vietnam. Graduated in Brisbane, Tseng received his PhD in Melbourne and has been living in the city, he told Wikinews. Tseng also formed Chinese Precinct Chamber of Commerce, an organisation responsible for many “community bond building initiatives”, the Lord Mayor candidate told Wikinews.

Tseng discussed his plans for leading Melbourne, recovering from COVID-19, and “Democracy 2.0” to ensure concerns of minorities in the city were also heard. Tseng also focused on the importance of the multi-culture aspect and talked about making Melbourne the capital of the aboriginals. Tseng also explained why he thinks Melbourne is poised to be a world city by 2030.

Tseng’s deputy Lord Mayor candidate Gricol Yang is a Commercial Banker and works for ANZ Banking Group.

Currently, Sally Capp is the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, the Victorian capital. Capp was elected as an interim Lord Mayor in mid-2018 after the former Lord Mayor Robert Doyle resigned from his position after sexual assault allegations. Doyle served as the Lord Mayor of Melbourne for almost a decade since 2008.

Friday, August 22, 2014

Russian authorities have detained four people on Wednesday on suspicion of vandalism, following an incident where the spire of the iconic Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building in Moscow was painted in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. The suspects, reportedly consisting of two men and two women, allegedly ascended the building by stairs to reach its top floor, before using climbing equipment to complete the ascent, according to Moscow police.

Over the course of the previous night, the suspects proceeded to paint the top half of the building’s star-shaped spire blue and erected a Ukrainian flag atop at about 7:15 am local time, reports the Interfax news agency, with information corroborated by Moscow’s municipal emergency services. The alterations to the building made by the suspects remained for several hours, before workers removed the flag and repainted the spire to its normal color. Containing 32 floors and standing at a height of 176 m (577 ft), the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building is one of the Seven Sisters, skyscrapers constructed between 1947 and 1953 in Moscow under the direction of Joseph Stalin.

Following the act, at least one of the suspects then reportedly descended from the building by parachute, reported state news channel Rossiya 24, and captured on a video published by Lifenews, reportedly filmed by a local resident. Additional video broadcast by Rossiya 24, taken from a window, captured a parachuting suspect landing in a nearby playground. Among the suspects was Alexander Pogrebov, who has denied the charges brought forth by authorities. “I was detained for parachuting off the skyscraper. I chose that place because it’s beautiful. […] It just so happened that at the time of the jump, someone else committed an act of vandalism — they destroyed the spire with paint, and raised the Ukrainian flag.” said Pogrebov in an interview to LifeNews.

Pogrebov’s comments were supported by a police official, who stated to the Itar-Tass agency: “The two young men and two girls say they jumped from a high building with parachutes. They say they didn’t hoist any flag and didn’t paint the flag.” If convicted of vandalism, Pogrebov and the other suspects may be sentenced to a maximum of three years imprisonment. Over the phone to Bloomberg, an unidentified duty press official stated the suspects were previously arrested over other charges. According to reports from Russian state television, all four suspects were Russian citizens.

Other acts by Russian protestors to show support and solidarity with Ukraine, contrasting the approval which came following the Russian annexation of Crimea, included the singing of the Ukrainian national anthem by protestors while being arrested. Russian musician Andrey Makarevich, who fronts the band Mashina Vremeni, which translates to “Time Machine”, was labelled as a “traitor” by Russian lawmakers and musicians who supported Russian interests, after he traveled to eastern Ukraine last week to perform for displaced children in regions held by the Ukrainian army.

On a post on Twitter, Russian opposition leader Gennady Gudkov stated “I don’t justify youngsters who painted a star on the skyscraper, but this is an administrative offense, not criminal”. In 2011 and 2012, following accusations of electoral fraud during the parliamentary elections at the time, Gudkov supported protestors who took to the streets of Moscow in opposition to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The act comes just days prior to Ukraine’s Day of the National Flag on August 23 and Independence Day on August 24. The country’s president, Petro Poroshenko, expressed his approval from Kiev of the act and praise for the suspects in a written post on Facebook. “On the eve of Independence Day we are starting an initiative called ‘Our Colours,’ which is devoted to the Ukrainian flag” ^{((uk))Ukrainian language: ???????????? ??? ???????????? ?? ????????? ?????????? “???? ???????”, ??? ?????????? ???????????? ???????}, wrote Poroshenko. “And it is symbolic that, on this day, our colours have been painted on what is perhaps the greatest skyscraper in Moscow. I urge Ukrainians throughout the world, wherever they are, on the eve of the anniversary of our independence, to decorate their homes, offices, and cars in our national colours.” ^{((uk))Ukrainian language: ???????????, ?? ? ??? ???? ? ???? ??????? ????????????, ???????, ????????? ??????? ? ??????. ???????? ????????? ?? ?????? ?????, ?? ? ???? ?? ????, ??????????? ??????? ????????????, ?????????? ???? ???????, ?????, ???? ? ???? ??????????? ???????.}

“I like very much the fact that, on the eve of celebrating the Ukrainian flag, one of Moscow’s highest buildings was painted in our colors,” Poroshenko said in a video posted on Facebook. “I congratulate these Ukrainians.” Following the deaths of more than 2,000 people and the displacement of 300,000 from their homes amid fighting in eastern Ukraine between the Ukrainian armed forced and pro-Russian separatists, Poroshenko is scheduled to discuss the crisis with Putin next week, the first such meeting in two months.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Finnish theatrical hard rock band Lordi – who are known for their ‘monster’ personas – have released a music video for the single Bite It Like a Bulldog. The song rose to number one on the Finnish single chart.

The song is the lead single from Deadache, Lordi’s new album, which is due for release later this month. The album’s musical style is described as similar to the band’s previous work in that it is melodic hard rock, but with a ‘rougher’ quality to it and stronger horror themes. The band’s keyboardist previously compared some of the music to that of Rob Zombie.

The band have also introduced new incarnations of their costumes, as they do for the release of each album. According to the group’s frontman, part of the aim for the video was to showcase these to the world for the first time. “The modern horror film classics such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake and Hostel were the starting points and the influence for the visual look,” he told MTV.

He also explained that the intention was to produce something different with the video. “We wanted to achieve something that breaks the tradition of Lordi videos… The idea was to have a video with a not-so-simple and easily understandable storyline. We wanted the clip to focus on the feeling of the song and the new, more grotesque look of the band.” The video was directed by Limppu Lindberg, who has worked on graphic design with Lordi and directed videos for Finnish metal bands such as Children of Bodom and Norther.

The video’s United States TV debut will be made tonight at 11pm on MTV2’s Headbangers Ball.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit organisation based in California, United States to regulate internet domain names, will vote on Thursday for a proposal to allow the open registration of top-level domains (TLDs) for Internet addresses. If the proposal succeeds, then as soon as next year any entity with sufficient funds may be able to apply for ownership of a relevant TLD, so that, for example, web sites could have addresses ending in .paris, .ebay or .love.

The range of TLDs has traditionally been heavily restricted by ICANN, with most being country codes (such as .uk for the United Kingdom, or .jp for Japan) or related to the purpose of a website (like .com for commercial websites, .edu for educational sites, and .org for non-profit organisations).

Some existing owners of TLDs have already set up arrangements that have made use of their flexibility – for example, the countries of Tuvalu and the Federated States of Micronesia have leased many domains on their country code TLDs (.tv and .fm respectively) to entertainment websites based on the association with “television” and “FM radio”.

Commentators have pointed out that this may open the way for the controversial .xxx domain, proposed for sites with adult content, which ICANN has previously rejected. Its existence will not be guaranteed in the new system, however, as domain registration will be subject to an independent arbitration process, and granted only when the registrant can demonstrate “a business plan and technical capability”, and applications may be rejected on “morality or public order” grounds. While the proposal does not include registration fees, the TLDs are predicted to cost several thousand dollars, at least.

ICANN CEO Paul Twomey, speaking with the BBC, compared the opening of domains to the opening of real estate in the United States in the 19th century. “It’s a massive increase in the geography of the real estate of the Internet,” he said.

The ICANN International Public Meeting, which opened in Paris, France on Monday, includes workshops and public forums as well as the ICANN Board meeting.